A Little Further
by mako-lies
Summary: Lightning and Sazh lick their wounds clean after a fight with bandits goes wrong. Ignores FFXIII-2 canon. Sazh/Lightning.


The fight goes wrong—wronger than wrong. The knife slides past Lightning's defenses, burying deep into her side, and Sazh stares, throat working as she stumbles. Her gunblade drops into the dirt with a thud.

He's fumbling for the potion when he hears someone approach from behind and he turns— _too slow, old man_ —and feels the crackle-promise of lightning. Hell, they have a mana-drive, of course they do. Then the electricity's coursing through him and he's—he thinks he's screaming, he feels like he's screaming. Black covers his vision, with flash-bursts of white. Far off, he hopes Lightning is okay, before he remembers that Lightning's a pretty tough cookie; she can do just about anything.

Too slow, old man, and he feels himself fall as if it is from far away. Sort of like someone else's falling, not him.

When he comes to, it's because Lightning's dribbled water into his beard. Well, it's all over his face, but he wakes up when it reaches his beard. Lightning's face is pale above his, blue eyes narrowed, trained on his face. Her face is blurred a little around the edges, probably from the electricity, but not too bad. His nose fills with the jasmine-mint smell of potions and he wonders how many they've used. Hope is going to kill them. "Sazh?" Lightning asks, voice hoarse, "Hey, welcome back."

He should be relieved, but there's a dark ring of bruises around her neck and he feels—"You okay?" he wheezes, tries to sit up but her hand presses against his chest, keeping him down.

"I'm fine," says Lightning.

Her side's been bandaged tight and it doesn't seem to be bleeding through yet. "You're the one I'm worried about," she tells him, carefully, the twist of her mouth unreadable, "Didn't realize they had a mana-drive until—"

She stops and her hand fists in the fabric of his shirt. "I'm getting too old for this," he says, the old excuse ready on his tongue.

Not meeting his eyes, Lightning hauls him up by his shirt so that he's sitting and they're face to face, way too close in his opinion, not that his opinion really matters, does it? Lightning doesn't stop for anybody and he wants to touch the bruises on her neck to see if they're real. A potion gets foisted into his hands and he drinks it, all too aware of their proximity and the fact she's not letting go.

"You should bring Snow along," he says once he's finished, "You and he'd have an easier time of it than me and you."

"I'd rather have you at my back."

He doesn't say anything. His girls are in their holsters and she must have put them there when he was passed out. As the world clears, he wonders how long he was out for, then notices the trickle of blood at her temple—damn, but what had happened after he passed out? Apparently all it took was a little electricity to—

"They told me where their base was," she says, softly, "In exchange for their lives."

Sazh does a quick count of the bodies, but there aren't any missing. When he looks to her, she meets his gaze, tension in her jaw, but the bruises at her throat bob as she swallows. "And you wanna go after those bandits now?" he asks her, because Lightning has been crazy since before he knew her, but sometimes even he can't suspend his disbelief.

(Maybe she still has a death wish. She took Fang and Vanille's sacrifice too-hard, has been smarting and fighting ever since, but Lightning _never_ willingly brings anyone along on her craziest missions. Makes him sick, because they're going to lose her someday soon, and what happens then?)

"No, not now. You're in no…" she stops. "We're in no condition."

Her hand's still in his shirt and he wonders if she can feel the pounding of his heart. Sazh nods. "You're sure you're okay?" he asks as he reaches out to disentangle her fingers.

Lightning shifts her grip from his shirt to his wrist, pulls her his hand to her mouth and—her lips brush the place where palm and wrist meet, electric and not painful at _all_ , and he's shivering like she really did light him up. Despite the potion, his throat's suddenly desert-dry. "I'm fine," she breathes into his glove.

Then she lets him go and stands to create the illusion of distance between them, but her shoulders are tense, her feet planted so firm in the dirt he doesn't think a tornado could budge her. It's crazy—so crazy, because he could barely even feel anything through his glove, but his hand's tingling and he resists the urge to rub at it. "We should head back. You okay to get moving?" she asks.

Sazh feels his old man bones protest as he moves to stand—but Lightning reaches for the hand she _kissed_ , offers him her hand—

And he takes it.

Of course he does, because he's followed her this far, hasn't he? What's a little further?


End file.
